“The passengers are going to New York, the captain is going to Los Angeles and the plane is going into pieces”.

I remember this theme in a poster hung at the entrance of what used to be the Savoy Cinema complex advertising an American comedy film in the early 1980s. And to me it seems that this theme can be very well used to describe the situation the current country administration is in.

“The Prime Minister is going north, a number of cabinet ministers are going south, the Nationalist party parliamentary group is going west, and the country is going into pieces.”

That’s the way it is and this has been proved by the events that took place these past 19 months. These events clearly and undoubtedly show that Lawrence Gonzi has lost his grip on his Cabinet and parliamentary group. Gone are the days of the ‘Par Idejn Sodi’ and it clearly seems that the rebellion within the parliamentary group is an ongoing thing.

The government’s instability is a very visible one. Cabinet ministers disagree with each other; the Nationalist Parliamentary group backbenchers criticise their own administration in public and adding insult to injury, the Prime Minister himself is doing uncalled for statements.

The one seat majority is Gonzi’s main concern and the concern has grown bigger throughout the months of this term as disagreement within the Nationalist parliamentary group grew bigger and bigger.

The first issue came up when in continuation of what was the practice throughout the last two terms in office the Cabinet met and decided how to go about certain issues in parliament without involving the parliamentary group. But this time round, knowing that every seat counted, the backbenchers started voicing their opinion against “them” being ignored by the Cabinet. Maybe this occurred also for the reason that a good number of those who used to occupy a seat in Cabinet before the last election, and who used to ignore their backbenchers, found themselves sitting on the back benches themselves. They went public, saying they are being ignored and finally got it their way. The Nationalist Parliamentary Group started meeting more frequently than before.

This still did not stop some backbenchers from going public to criticise their own Prime Minister on the way he dealt with one situation after another.

What Lawrence Gonzi did so far was trying to please the so called “rebels” within his parliamentary group to get them shut their mouth, sit back and do not create problems or particular situations. This irritated the “non-rebel” members of the same group so much that some of them are stating that “if you want to get something or given more importance within the parliamentary group, just go public voicing your opposition to what the government is doing and Gonzi will give you what you want to keep you happy.”

And so we have ministers attacking fellow Cabinet members, backbenchers pointing fingers at Cabinet members; clashes and serious accusations during the Nationalist parliamentary group meeting and to the delight of many, the details are leaked to the Opposition and to the press before the meeting is over and they are out of the room.

The situation we have within the administration and the Nationalist Party parliamentary group gives us a perfect setting to try and get the BBC to finance a revival of the epic comic series of “Yes, Prime Minister”.

Unfortunately this mess is giving this country what it does not need - instability.

At a time when the country really needed a stable government to face the international problems, we have a really unstable government. We have the Prime Minister and one of his top ministers fuelling instability within the industrial, employment and economical sector.

Take for example the utility bills problem. While employers, businessmen and unions where insisting to relax the price fixing regime for utilities, out came Gonzi and Austin Gatt hinting that the country is in for another price increase.

Such declarations on the eve of a budget led to more instability and uncertainty.

One could argue that this is the ideal setting for any party in opposition. Seeing the government’s ship sinking, the opposition should cheer and celebrate. For sure, that would have been the attitude if at this point in time we had the Nationalist Party in Opposition.

During the past days, I’ve met a number of persons, of whom some hasve always supported the Nationalist Party, who all commended what the Labour Party leader Joseph Muscat did last Sunday during the national manifestation in Zabbar. Obviously he criticised the government’s doing but he showed a progressive a positive approach when two weeks before the budget he put forward ten proposals that can be of great help to give a boost to the standard of living and to the economy.

Surely these proposals were drafted after being deeply examined from the economical point of view. Their validity and viability is so much a guarantee that we had more than one constituted body that expressed themselves in favor of one or some of the ten proposals put forward by Dr Muscat.

Funny but in this country, on the eve of the annual budget, we have a situation where instead of the government, as we should have, it’s the opposition that the showing what is the way ahead.

Gino Cauchi is a Labour MP